Stateful VS Stateless: The Key Differences

• Introduction
• What is Stateful?
• Advantages of Stateful
• Stateful Vs Stateless: IPv6
• Disadvantages of Stateful
• What is Stateless?
• Advantages of Stateless Protocol
• Disadvantages of Stateless Protocol
• Stateful Vs Stateless
• Stateful Vs Stateless Firewall
• FAQs

Introduction

A few years ago, clients or the end-user unit were ‘narrow’, they were in short supply in both hardware and software, whereas the rest of the heavy lifting was carried out by powerful servers. And thereafter it made sense for as good as all the complication and performance to be operated by ‘server-side’.  With the blowing up of the WWW ( World Wide Web ) and the related increase of the HTTP ( HyperText Transfer Protocol ), Web browsers and other client users, software and hardware set off as more influential and the end-user became ‘broad’. They had grasped more and more services that were earlier on operated by servers. And as the software, the other digital systems have gained a pace in increase in complication and performance, so did the demand and necessity for sessions. With the increase in technology, many of us are familiar with the word “network protocol”. Thereupon have you ever noted what is network protocol? Network Protocols are basically a bunch of rules which probably dictate how the information will be configured, conveyed, and obtained by computer network tools. 

The network protocol, on the whole, can be classified as Stateful and Stateless. The term ‘state’ is known for the type or the attribute of being at a given point in time. The stretch of interaction a client has with it and how much of the data is saved concludes whether the protocol is stateful or stateless. Let us get more knowledge about Stateful vs Stateless in the upcoming sections.

What is Stateful?

Stateful is a protocol that has the ability to recollect and reserve the attributes of the interactions it has with the server that it governs. If the end-user makes a request to the server then it looks forward to some kind of feedback, if it does not receive any then it sends the request again. This is the process seen in the Stateful Protocol. The well-known feature of Stateful is that it keeps up the state of all its sessions which could be a confirmation session or an end user’s request session; it maintains them all. To give examples of Stateful applications we can add in FTP ( File Transfer Protocol ) sessions which involve a number of data transfers. Also, the applications of Stateful are those that can be returned back and forth, again and again. Online banking and email can also be taken as instances for Stateful applications where they use the same server every time they process the user’s request. Here they perform with the repeated context of the frequent transactions and the present transaction to be in pace with the data stored. So this could be the reason for having the same servers each time they have to process a request from the end-user of the Stateful applications. Also, this protocol has a plus point within it- even if it faces an interruption in between the procedure, the history and the data have been saved so more or less you can be picked up from where you had left. We can also add Telnet as one of the examples. 

As we have gained some knowledge about the Stateful protocol, let us further increase our knowledge by learning about its pros and cons.

Advantages of Stateful

• Stateful protocols are well known for their state of connection. 
• This protocol comes up with a healthier performance for the end-user by maintaining the detailed track of the connection and since it keeps the track, it comes up with superior performance. 
• The requests usually made from these protocols are generally depending on the server-side state. 
• The applications of Stateful protocol need some backup storage. 

Disadvantages of Stateful

• As we know this protocol highly relies on backup storage, which could cause a reduction in performance. 
• Also, these protocols are greatly reliant on the server-side. 
• This protocol needs memory allotment as a dependent to reserve the data. 
• Also, we know that Stateful protocols are extremely dependent on the server-side states. 

What is Stateless?

Let us take an example to understand this protocol in a better way. When you usually message to your friend you just send the message and it shows delivered, irrespective of the confirmation received your message has been sent. This is what we consider the Stateless protocol; it is a type of network protocol in which the end-user addresses a server request for which the server sends a response ground on the ongoing state. When the end-user sends the request, it does not require the server to hold on to the session information or status of each partner. As this protocol does not store any knowledge or information, then every transaction is created from scratch for the initial period. In this protocol, the different requests that are made are filtered by various different servers.  Also, this protocol relies on the information or the data sent or given at the moment of each request and not on the request that was made earlier to it. Let’s take the example of the search engine, while you search for anything content you type your query in the search bar and hit the enter button and if in between there was a disturbance or if you had shut it by chance then you just initiate a new one. Examples of different stateless protocols include HTTP ( Hypertext Transfer Protocol ), UDP ( User Datagram Protocol ), and DNS ( Domain Name System ).   

As we have now got some idea about the introduction of the Stateless protocol, let us further discuss their advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Stateless Protocol

• Stateless protocols enhance visibility as every request is its own resource and can be treated. 
• It allows stability across different other applications. 
• In this protocol, every single communication is disconnected and unique from the ones that are made after or before it.  
• An application seems to be more comfortable to work with and more supportable when using Stateless protocol. In Stateless protocol, there is no need to reference data to another packet, every packet of data/ information proceeds on its own. 
• New occurrences of an application can be included or deleted on request. 
• Stateless protocols also eliminate the overhead to create or use the sessions. 

Disadvantages of Stateless Protocol

• The limitation of Stateless protocol is that they do not hold back data about a specific user session. 
• They are also intrinsically not as capable, as they do not reserve data about a certain end-user session. This could result in tiresome for the end-user as they do not have specific sessions where the information is not stored. 
• For Stateless application, it may be necessary to take in supplementary data in every demand and correspondingly the outcome would be that the server will be in need to explain this up-to-date information. 
• As Stateless Protocols do not reserve any data, they might degrade network processes with the growth of repetitive details.

Stateful Vs Stateless

Let us look into some differences between the Stateful and Stateless protocols below:

Stateful Vs Stateless Firewall

Firewalls are responsible for fault-finding security for commercial systems and data. We have security rules and instructions formatted beforehand on which the firewalls function and operate accordingly. The traffic flowing in and out of our network is generally regulated and managed by firewall applications. Through this monitoring, they make our network safe by permitting only specific types of traffic to flow through them. A firewall can also be called access control technology as it controls the access of the network. As we know, nowadays the internet is the easiest way one can hack or become a threat, being safe and having precautions is the best way to overcome it. 

Stateful and Stateless are two types of Firewalls. With this, let us understand further the differences between the Stateful vs the Stateless firewall technology that supports us to make sure that the business is secured and protected appropriately.

STATEFUL FIREWALL:

The Stateful Firewalls, execute by monitoring framework about active sessions and utilize the state data to fasten up the packet handling.  The Stateful firewalls inspect all characteristics of the traffic perspective, their parameters and also the communication features. Also, the Stateful firewall examines the whole thing inside the data packets, they also look at the behaviour of these data packets. And if it gets a data packet while examining any doubtful activities, they will address it as a threat and most of the time these may not be manually inputted by an admin, but the firewall can suspect it. 

STATELESS FIREWALL:

The Stateless firewalls make use of the data packet’s starting point, the endpoint and also the other characteristics to set forth the result of whether the data hand out a threat. These characteristics are usually moved in by the admin or by the producer through the rules or guidelines that are prewritten. These firewalls on the other hand lonely focus on single packets by the means of these rules that are prewritten. If there is a data packet present which goes outside the characteristics or the guidelines that are considered to be acceptable, then the stateless firewall protocol will determine the threat and then limit the data housing.

Stateful Vs Stateless: IPv6

The mechanism of both the Stateful address and Stateless address is described by IPv6. For the Stateful autoconfiguration model, hosts get hold of the interface address or the config data and the characteristics from the server. This autoconfiguration protocol agrees to allow the host to get hold of the info from a server. These servers keep up with the database that authorizes which addresses have been allocated to which of the hosts. 

For Stateless protocol, autoconfiguration is not necessarily dependent on the manual config of the host, and if any minute changes of the config of the routers. Hosts also create an interface identifier which exceptionally detects an interface on a subnet. Routers usually are the ones that promote prefixes that determine the subnet which is related to the links.

When the site is not disturbed by the particular address used by a host, then this approach is used in Stateless Protocol. On the other hand, it also has a parameter that the address should be distinct. Stateful address and Stateless address autoconfiguration both can be executed at the same time.

Conclusion

We have discussed various topics such as Stateful protocol, Stateless Protocol, their difference, Stateful Firewall, Stateless Firewall, their difference and also Stateful IPv6 and Stateless IPv6. Let us summarize a few points. In Stateful protocol, the server needs to hold on to the state of the session or the process whereas for the Stateless protocol this is completely opposite. For the Stateful protocol, they expect an answer in return for the request sent, if no reply is received from the end then the request is sent again on the other hand in Stateless protocols, the end-user sends the request, and the request is responded based on the request sent depending on the state. We have FTP ( File Transfer Protocol), and Telnet, as examples of Stateful protocols and for Stateless protocols we have HTTP ( Hypertext Transfer Protocol), DNS ( Domain Name System ), and UDP ( User Datagram Protocol ).  

Difference between IPV4 vs IPV6

The Stateful Firewalls, execute by monitoring framework about active sessions and utilize the state data to fasten up the packet handling, whereas the Stateless firewall treats every data individually and does not relate with the connection state. Because of this, the performance is relatively slower in Stateful protocols as compared with the Stateless protocols that are faster.

FAQs